The journey always has some sort of hiccup or two, but each time it is so very ‘worth it.’ As I woke this morning, hearing birds chirping outside Avigail’s window, I took a deep breath, stretched and remembered, “I’m in the coolest place on earth!!  Israel!”

Our flight was largely uneventful, making the quickest transit we’ve ever experienced inspite of sitting on the tarmac for an hour before even leaving Charlotte. (I can’t wait for them to begin a direct flight from CLT to TLV…) Where hiccup, and the fun, happened was between the airport and Tiberius.

Our simple plan was to plug an address into the rental car’s dashboard Waze and hit the road.  Because we were in  a hurry, we loaded the car and I started rolling.  Only after we were about 5km from the airport did we realize that my phone was not logging into the network and she had zero service to pull our destination address off of her tablet.  NICE!!

This is our fifth trip to Israel, so I had a pretty good idea where we were headed.  Start off toward Jerusalem, catch Highway 6 North, then take the Tiberius exit.  In town, I knew that if I drove straight through the middle of town and went left just before the water I could get really close I could see a landmark or two that would remind me from our daystop a year ago. Besides, sunset was still hours away…  What could go wrong, right?

Highway six was a parking lot. In my many times on that interstate, I’ve never seen it so congested. It took several hours to make the trip and it was pitch dark dotted by lights on the many hillside communities as we got to the edge of town and still, no idea exactly where we were headed.

I threaded through town looking for anything familiar and we took a foray into side streets for a couple minutes, but quickly realized though close, we weren’t going to find the B&B in the dark. We decided to find a restaurant with wifi, eat and solve our mapping issue before continuing on.

We didn’t stumble into the cheapest place, but the food was amazing and we must have had ‘American’ written all over us because an English speaking waitress pushed to the fore as we came through the door. We enjoyed an amazing kabob dinner with all of the trimmings while easily solving the mapping issue. Indeed we had gotten to within about 400m of the house before finding help. 

Upon arrival at Avigail’s we were surprised to find that Conner and Celesta Stevens, of Texas, had just arrived and would be staying for Shabbat along with today’s expected arrival of dear friends from Holland!! This place doesn’t just feel like home, it is family!

We talked late into the night before retiring.

All  but one have drifted out of bed, coffee is on and the day’s activities, preparing for Shabbat, are being discussed.

Stay tuned.  Lots of pics and video coming as we enjoy the next 19 days.

Shalom.